Category: life

I’ve been derelict in my duties to describe the magic of Ohio. So I’ll let you know when I figure it out. Just kidding. Canton is nice enough, the people are friendly except for the guy at Radio Shack, and where else can you visit the home of Goodyear, the birthplace of Hoover vacuum cleaners, and the Pro football hall of fame all in one day? I didn’t manage to visit any of these though.

On July 1st I hit the road about 3pm. The trip was supposed to take about seven hours; it ultimately took eight and a half. Congratulations to the highway designer who saved so many taxpayer dollars by making the only road out of town a single-laner. I arrived at 11:30, crashed. I spent most of the next morning just driving around the vast shopping mall that is North Canton.

Of course the real magic that drew me there was the official legal union between Scott and Jill. Their wedding was lovely and I know they will have a wonderful life together. Also it was good to see a number of people whom I haven’t seen in a while; I shall have to do a better job so that we don’t have to make a 14 hour round trip to catch up. I forgot my camera so no pictures this time.

I resisted the urge to make a side trip to Cleveland on Sunday to see plastinated corpses and the rock & roll hall of fame. Perhaps next time I am in town.

I dropped my car off at my Honda dealer this morning. Whenever they ask me which car is mine, I point and say, “the gold Honda.” I do this quite unintentionally, but I still think it’s funny to indicate the make in a lot full of identical cars.

So last night I went to see the Marines’ silent drill platoon and drum and bugle corps. As seen on hit CBS television series Major Dad. They perform every Tuesday night at the Iwo Jima memorial from now until August; if you go in for pomp and celebration of military discipline, this show is for you. The marines walk around, spin rifles, throw them to each other, right face, about face, left face, right flank, forward hut, all without verbal command. The drill platoon, as far as I could tell, was practically flawless. I watched the drum and bugle corps with a more critical eye, since I once pretended to know something about marching band. The band had nice drill, maybe not top tier of competitive D&B, but some complicated formations and none of that standing around business. Musically it was… insert Groucho Marx comment about military music here. The poor lead trumpet was having a rough night, missing a couple of notes (both, of course, off the charts of anything I ever played). But who cares, it was fun and it didn’t rain, much.

Here’s an awkward net.situation: someone mistakingly sends you a personal email to your address because your name is very close to the name of someone else in the organization. Normally this is merely amusing but sometimes it can be distressing. In this case, my alter ego’s sibling has cancer. The person who sent me an email offers condolences and reveals that his sibling also is afflicted. How does one reply to this without seeming callous? I can’t just forward it to the intended recipient, or worse, delete the email. I don’t know the guy. I can’t say, “Oh, sorry to hear about your sis. Tough break. Good luck!”

I lied in my response, saying that I had stopped reading quickly when realizing it was meant for someone else. I went with “Best regards.” What kind of a closing is that? We need a better palette when it comes to wrapping up letters or emails. There’s practically nothing between the stoic “Sincerely” and too emotionally overloaded “Love.” Something that succintly says, “I would be truly sorry and offer my heartfelt, sincere sympathy, if it would mean anything to you, given that I’m just a random human thousands of miles away that just happens to have the same name as someone else.” Well, we do what we can.

Love, Bob

My local post office still has one of the stamp machines that dispenses dollar coins as change. It has a sign bearing witness to this fact in big red letters. Naturally I couldn’t resist buying a book of stamps with a $20. I hate to see a good currency go underutilized.

The machine poured forth eleven dollars in coins. 8 Sacagaweas and 3 Susan B.s. In Canada, whole dollar coins (loonies and twonies) are used as a matter of course. My experience in Toronto was that I had a lot less useless change than here in the states. Things tended to be priced in round numbers so I wouldn’t wind up with 30 pennies in my pocket at the end of the day. Why can’t the U.S. adopt this practice? I blame the Coinstar lobby. Once our hyperinflation takes hold and the dollar is demoted to a quarter, perhaps the practice will become more widespread.

I went to buy a Gatorade-brand sports drink with a pair of coins, a Suze and a Sac. The cashier stared at the change for a while and I eventually had to help her out, telling her it was two dollars, like it says on the back of each coin. She short-changed me $.75 anyway. That damn Ms. Anthony! Next time I’ll pay more attention, and I think I’ll also be sure to use Susan B.s only in a context in which it cannot mathematically be confused with a quarter. But the honeymoon isn’t spoiled yet; I still have money to burn. Or melt, as it were.

There’s some sort of machismo tied to how awful the traffic is in your city. Who doesn’t look on the ten worst traffic spots in the US with a little bit of pride when their city is mentioned, or disappointment when it isn’t? I am here to tell Atlantans that I’ve seen worse traffic than the usual downtown connector clusterfuck. I’ve seen worse traffic than DC’s beltway bridgelock. The city that has them both easily topped is Boston, and I say this solely on the basis of a few hours as a pedestrian in that fine city.

But Atlantans are a special breed of driver. Compared to Virginians, anyway, who — get this — obey most of the traffic laws. Atlanta is one of the few places where you can do 25 over the speed limit in the next-to-rightmost lane of an eight lane highway and get passed on the right by a tractor-trailer. So I got the use of my Dad’s truck this weekend. It’s a Dodge Dakota. Dakota: ten tons of bone crunching, car-crushing madness. I am not very confident piloting this behemoth, as from the height of the cab I can barely make out the ant-like vehicles in the neighboring lanes. But as I drive the old reflexes come back. Before the evening was through, I would get honked at, drive on the wrong side of the yellow line, and blare my own horn at some unsuspecting jerk. It felt good.

Forgot to mention that I’m going back home this weekend. Anyone who wants to hook up on Thursday or Friday drop me a line. Holla!

A few things I have learned from driving in a state with a crazy high number of personalized license plates:

• Just in case people can’t recognize the make and model of your car, the license plate is a great place for a helpful reminder. Oh, it’s an M3, I couldn’t tell from the branding trim all over your ride! (Yes, someone has YUGO.) Include the color too; you never know when someone might be colorblind.
• People who have QT, HOT T, or SXC somewhere in their license plate aren’t.
• I still don’t know what PIXPOO means, nor do I really want to.
• There are lots of assholes on the road. Not that that has anything to do with license plates, just saying.

I think there should be a subversive movement of low self-esteem license plates. Put out your basic insecurities for all to see. Instead of QT, why not SO FUGLY? IM DUMB? Or, if you are quite secure in yourself, let people know just how much: HUGE EGO. All of these plates are available right now in the state of Virginia!

Make your own State of Virginia license plate.

Plates that won’t make the cut.

What a weekend it has been. I left Thursday for some gambling action in AC and to send my buddy Scott off on a life of marriage. We arrived at the Borgata around 10pm, and hit the poker room where everyone else was already “flopping nuts” as they say. I signed up for a $3/$6 table and got my $140 in chips, then sat down when my name was called. First hand: pocket tens which matched up for a set on the flop. The turn made a pair on the board so I had my full house and took it to the bank. Unfortunately, that would not be a sign of luck to come. By the end of the night, I came back from a deficit to be just $4 short of what I started with, not too bad.

Friday was the day I decided that gambling is not for me. I hit a long string of 2s and 3s at the blackjack table while everyone else hit it big. I left after I had met about half of my pre-set loss limit. Then came back, to lose another third. After that, I went for a swim.

The Borgata is a nice hotel. The showers are all marble, the elevators play West Side Story on a loop, and music is piped into the heated pool, so that you can listen to it underwater.

I blew the rest of my money Friday night on more poker in a boring 2/4 game. In all it was a good time; I just think two days is a little much to spend in a casino and it would’ve been nice if the weather had been good enough to go outside. Never went to bed before 3, and I was always the first.

Saturday I returned, caught up on sleep a bit, then headed to Joe & Jes’ for a cookout. Played DDR and Karaoke R. My singing/dancing careers are about to take off.

Last night Angeline came down this way for dinner. It appears we are back together again, which is good, though not without a tiny bit of anxiety. Who didn’t see this coming besides me?

Today, I should’ve attended work again, but I had to wait for Ikea to drop off my new kitchen in flat box form. They finished up about 2pm and I figured commuting 3 hours to work two hours was pretty pointless. So I stayed here, made spaghetti and finished up my HDTV wiring without cutting any more holes in the wall.

Yesterday I went to IKEA and bought a new set of cabinets (Adel medium brown, with rockdots over the a) for my kitchen for the cost of a couple of computers. And so begins the glorious kitchen remodeling process. Subject to budget of course, but I’m considering Pergo flooring and new appliances and all that. Now the anxiety over whether I picked the right cabinets is beginning to set in. Oh well, anything is better than what I had before. If anyone wishes to weigh in on wall/floor/countertop/appliance colors, or can recommend a local installer to put it all together, I’m all ears. The cabinets are a somewhat cherry color.

After the IKEA trip, since Angeline happened to call, and since I was already halfway to Baltimore, we met up for dinner. Ah, dinner with the ex. But it was nice and not too awkward. I’ve had better meals at the Cheesecake Factory than the blackened chicken pasta, but their cheesecake cannot be denied.

I received in the mail this week a copy of the Codetalkers show I had blogged about earlier. I received the copy by way of B&P; that is, I found a guy who taped it and sent him blanks (B) and return postage (P), and he sent me back the CDs with the songs on it. A great recording. At some point I’ll upload it to archive.org so all peoples of the world may enjoy it.

Saturday I walked the perimeter of East Potomac park. This is a long, smelly, dirty walk. As the park is given to flooding, there was all kinds of nice flotsam along the way: dead fish, tree branches, snack food wrappers, and many empty bait containers. Dozens of people were spending the afternoon fishing the Anacostia and Potomac. I hope this was entirely for fun and that no one actually ate the living containers of pollution. For all of it’s lack of charm, there are a few worthwhile sights: the Awakening sculpture, the meeting of the Anacostia and Potomac, seeing the Wilson bridge and the masonic temple off in the distance, watching planes take off from National, Georgetown in silhouette against the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial.

My original plan was to go geocaching in downtown DC. This is where you are given GPS coordinates and have to find something hidden there. But I don’t have a GPS unit and couldn’t lock on to a wireless AP from the Mall. Oh well. Anyway, any group that borrows terminology from Harry Potter (non-cachers are called ‘muggles’) is automatically lame.

Sunday was a trip to IKEA where I finally solved my bedding issues. There you buy a cover for a quilt and the stuffing separately, so you can get nearly any shade. Of course, it costs just as much as a normal comforter but they do have dark blue so who am I to complain. I did not eat the food.